Michael Drayton (1563–1631)

Michael Drayton - Idea 1619
Michael Draytons Idea is an Elizabethan love sonnet collection and while keeping to the conventions of these collections the final version of 1619 has a more individual voice. The first collection of the sonnets was printed in 1594 under the title Idea's Mirror. There were important revisions and additions in 1599 and the final sonnet sequence was published in 1619. Only 20 sonnets survived more or less intact from the earliest version and there were 43 new ones show more including what many critics agree is his best sonnet:

"Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love’s latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies;
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes—
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might’st him yet recover!"

This has since been retitled as Loves Farewell and is no 61 in the sequence. The following 12 sonnets are also very good. The previous 60 sonnets as one would expect are a mixed bag, but most of them are meticulously put together and give evidence of his sobriquet as the "golden mouthed poet" There is an introductory sonnet to this collection entitled "To the Reader of These Sonnets in which Drayton claims to be a libertine in the sense that he will go his own way. He seems to refute the idea, long held that love sonnets should focus on the idea that the poet should concentrate on the excellence of his mistress or the passion of the speaker. There is an element of this in some of the sonnets, an element of satire an element of humour, however it is the excellence of some of the poetry that puts Drayton in the same league as Shakespeare, Spenser, Daniel and Sir Philip Sydney Here is that opening poem :

To The Reader of These Sonnets
"Into these Loves who but for passion looks,
At this first sight here let him lay them by
And seek elsewhere, in turning other books,
Which better may his labour satisfy,
No far-fetched sigh shall ever wound my breast,
Nor in Ah me's my whining sonnets drest,
A libertine, fantastically I sing.
My verse is the true image of my mind,
Ever in motion, still desiring change:
And as thus to variety inclined,
So in all humours sportively I range:
My muse is rightly of the English strain
That cannot long one fashion entertain.

This is one of my favourite collections of Elizabethan love sonnets and so 4 stars. show less

Michael Drayton 1563-1631 was an English poet and playwright. He was successful and widely read in the Elizabethan and Jacobean era, but has since suffered some obscurity. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature says:

Michael Drayton was a major poet of his age; but neither the present nor any future age will believe that a complete knowledge of his very extensive poetry is a necessity of intellectual life.

A bit of a put down, but the Cambridge History certainly does not take any show more prisoners when discussing authors outside of the elite canon. At the end of its summary of Drayton's works it concludes that "Drayton is a kind of poetical epitome. There is something of almost every kind of poetry in him. Drayton may not be read, but he is delightful to read in". There is little doubt that Drayton was a popular poet and his popularity was based on his printed work. He was disdainful of those gentleman poets who did not publish their work, referring to them as 'Cabinet Poets'. He had trouble finding a patron either due to bad luck or his ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and so he needed to get into print.

Ideas Mirrour was published in 1594 at the height of the Elizabethan craze for love sonnets and Drayton writes very much within the Petrarchan template. It is an early work and he revised and added to the poems repeatedly throughout his career, but I have read the original 51 sonnets: two of which are stretched to eighteen lines. On the whole it is a good collection and I would say better than most, as it repeatedly introduces arresting imagery and for much of the time avoids the obscurity that belabours some of these collections when the poets launch into mere stylistic exercises. The poems however do not breakout of the straight jacket imposed by the unwritten rules of love sonnets at the time and so there is little evidence of personal feeling.

In his introductory sonnet Drayton acknowledges his debt to Sir Philip Sydney:

Divine Syr Phillip, I avouch thy writ,
I am no Pickpurse of anothers wit.

And in the first sonnet titled Amour 1 he comes straight to the point in the very first line:

Reade heere (sweet Mayd) the story of my wo,

He is addressing directly the woman who has rejected him as a lover. The idea of unrequited love is usual in theses collections, but Drayton seems to be making this personal: the Mayd is never named and referred to as Idea, but it is conjectured he is writing the poems for Anne Goodere the daughter of his patron at the time, she married someone else, but remained on good terms with Drayton. He emphasis her virtue throughout as well as his own chaste desire and so there is a feeling of a genuine love story here.

The sequence runs through the usual gamut of praise for the beloved and then the realisation that he has been rejected. There are a few instances where bitterness of his loss is reflected in some vitriol against his beloved, but he soon recovers, wishing to internalise his feelings and ends by restating his love and admiration.

There are many enjoyable poems in this collection, but of course not every one would be to my taste and there are plenty of examples where the poet is either labouring the same point over a sequence of poems or is indulging in exercises of style, but even Shakespeare in his wonderful collection is guilty of this. It is therefore pertinent to think about those poems that appear to be successful and please the reader: here are a couple of examples:

In Amour 7 he plays with a personification of Time:

Stay, stay, sweet Time; behold, or ere thou passe
From world to world, thou long hast sought to see,
That wonder now wherein all wonders be,
Where heaven beholds her in a mortall glasse.
Nay, looke thee, Time, in this Celesteall glasse,
And thy youth past in this faire mirror see:
Behold worlds Beautie in her infancie,
What shee was then, and thou, or ere shee was.
Now passe on, Time: to after-worlds tell this,
Tell truelie, Time, what in thy time hath beene,
That they may tel more worlds what Time hath seene,
And heauen may joy to think on past worlds blisse.
Heere make a Period, Time, and saie for mee,
She was the like that never was, nor never more shalbe.

Amour 45 later in the sequence when things are not to rosy:

Blacke pytchy Night, companyon of my woe,
The Inne of care, the Nurse of drery sorrow,
Why lengthnest thou thy darkest howres so,
Still to prolong my long tyme lookt-for morrow?
Thou Sable shadow, Image of dispayre,
Portraite of hell, the ayres black mourning weed,
Recorder of reuenge, remembrancer of care,
The shadow and the vaile of euery sinfull deed.
Death like to thee, so lyve thou still in death,
The grave of ioy, prison of dayes delight.
Let heavens withdraw their sweet Ambrozian breath,
Nor Moone nor stars lend thee their shining light;
For thou alone renew'st that olde desire,
Which still torments me in dayes burning fire.

I rate this as 3.5 stars. show less

Michael Drayton a professional poet in 1627 and towards the end of his career once again succeeded with something new to him. He is reported to have joked that in his society stories of fairies and fairyland were so popular he thought people were wedded to them. He published his own fairytale Nymphidia.

This story is told in the first person by Nymphidia who was a witness to the events. Queen Mab has been seduced by Pigwiggen and has made arrangements to elope with him. Her husband Oberon the show more king of the fairies is enraged and races off to bring her back. We are in a world of diminutive characters and so Oberon finds himself battling with wasps, a glow worm, bees in a hive, a mole. until he meets the hobgoblin Puck. He recruits Puck to help him find Mab who has curled up in an empty nutshell with her lover Pigwiggen. Puck finds them and Pigwiggen prepares for battle with Oberon:

"And quickly arms him for the field
A little cockle-shell his shield
Which he could very bravely weild
Yet could it not be pierced:
His spear a bent both stiff and strong
And well near of two inches long :
The pile was of a horse fly's tongue
Whose sharpness nought reversed

And puts him on a coat of mail,
Which was of fish's scale,
That when his foe should him assail,
No point should be prevailing:
His rapier was a hornet's sting;
It was a very dangerous thing,
For he chanced to hurt the king,
It would be long in healing

His helmet was a beetle's head.
Most horrible and full of dread,
That able was to strike one dead,
yet did it well become him;
And for a plume a horse's hair
Which, being tossed in the air,
Had force to strike his foe with fear,
And turn his weapon from him."

Tomalin is the second to Oberon and TomThumb supports Pigwiggen. They joust and then draw swords beating each other near to death. Prosperine intervenes at this stage with a healing potion and then with a corked jar of fog which she unleashes. it surrounds everybody and they all forget the recent events. Queen Mab takes Oberon home for a feast.

Drayton starts his poem by reminding his audience of the trifles that were started by Chaucer and Rabelais and developed by others as an introduction to his tale of fairyland. It is light and frothy full of good humour and is entertaining to read today - 4 stars.
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Englands Heroicall Epistles - Michael Drayton 1597
In previous historical poems Piers Gaveston, Matilda, The Tragical Legend of Robert, Duke of Normandy and Mortimeriados Drayton is concerned with a conscientious and factual handling of historical facts. and secondly with a rhetoric that will present this material most cogently. Drayton was inspired by Samuel Daniel's civil wars who were both influenced by the classical poet Lucan. Drayton's epistles are written in the form of a complaint a show more form which was itself inspired by A Mirror for Magistrates 1559. One of the mirrors innovations was that the ghosts of fallen luminaries speak directly and in so doing they establish the "complaint tradition" and engage in issues of character and narrative that prove especially fertile.

Drayton's epistles take the form of 12 pairs of letters written between 12 lovers of the past. These lovers are historical figures ranging from the Plantagenets up to the Tudors and so taking in much of the history of the Wars of the Roses. When the epistles first appeared in 1597 Drayton was already well known as a prolific writer and experimenter in a number of genres - pastoral, sonnet, history legend and epic. Epistles are concerned with the dynamic interplay between art and the immediacy of experience. After his earlier work Drayton cut down the use of ornament in his poetry. It could be distracting. Epistles showed a smoother integration of historical matter and poetic devices. By use of the epistle form he reveals character and situation through dramatic dialogue. This tends to emphasis character over history. He concentrated on a characters response to a particular event.

The first of these is an epistle of Rosamund to King Henry II. In an introduction Drayton tells us that Henry's queen Ellinor is jealous of his mistress Rosamund. Henry is absent in the wars in Normandy and so has placed Rosamund in a solitary building surrounded by a Maze. Rosamund desperate to escape writes to him. She ends her letter by saying:

"I am already hatefull to the light,
It is enough, betray me not to night.
Then sith my shame so much belongs to thee,
Rid me of that by onely murdring me;
And let it iustly to my charge be layde,
Thy royall person I would haue betrayd;
Thou shalt not neede by circumstance t'•ccuse mee,
If I denie it, let the heauens refuse mee.
My life's a blemish which doth cloude thy name,
Take it away, and cleere shall shine thy fame."

The king writes back basically saying he still loves her and so what can he do? He is away fighting a war.

The second of these letters is King John to Matilda. Drayton in a short introduction tells of the situation. King John had tried by all possible means to seduce the chaste Mathilda; he had banished her father and his supporters and in desperation Mathilda had fled to a nunnery

King John writes to Mathilda: He tries to woo Mathilda with religious imagery, but twist religious symbols to suit his own lascivious ends. He is relentless in his pursuit of her. Mathilda writes back:

"O what strange madnes so possesseth men
Bereft of sence; such sencelesse wonders seeing,
vvithout forme, fashion, certaintie, or being?
For which so many die to liue in anguish,
Yet cannot liue if thus they should not languish;
That comfort yeelds not, & yet hope denies not,
A life that liues not, and a death that dies not;
That hates vs most, when most it speakes vs faire,
Doth promise all things, alwayes paies with ayre,"

She goes on to ask him if it is his unbridled lust that causes all the problems? - a rhetorical question. She says she will die in the nunnery.

The letters give the two points of view, usually it is the woman who is in distress, either because her good name and so her life is being destroyed, or because she is powerless in the relationship and dependent on the man to put things right.

As we move through the Wars of the Roses, the political situation becomes more complicated and the footnotes suppling the information to some of the lines of poetry gets equally complicated. The political events take priority over the individuals narratives during some of this period. When the political situation becomes less complicated the interior stories of the lovers take precedence again for example Edwards IV's wooing of Shores wife.

These epistles proved to be Drayton's most successful work and one can see why. It would have been popular with female readers who could see themselves in the position of some of the unfortunate women. Drayton's historical stories and his poetry of the narratives of the individuals saw him at
his best and so 4 stars. show less